A Circular Devotion
by bluenight361
Summary: Hermione and Ron would give up their lives for Harry in a heartbeat—there was never any doubt about that. But Hermione’s beginning to realize that their lives would be far from the ultimate sacrifice for him, merely the last. war!fic
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, it all belongs to JK.

Warnings: Violence, dark magic, minor character death

On the twenty-fourth day of the war, Ron and Hermione begin following Harry around.

It's not that they haven't been keeping a close eye on him before. It isn't hard now that the three of them are living at 12 Grimmauld Place, holding Order of the Phoenix meetings and researching horcruxes and generally living in a state of terrified boredom (or is it bored terror?) together, but still, they've been sticking to Harry so closely that Harry once complained that he hadn't seen his shadow in a month and would Ron please move, he'd like to get reaquainted with it. Ron simply grinned and said that Harry's shadow had tipped him extra to take its place for a little while.

But on the twenty-third day of the war, Professor McGonagall receives a call from the Ministry of Magic, and that afternoon Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to Privet Drive to see Tonk's body unceremoniously dumped on the Dursley's front step. Her throat is brutally mauled, muscle and tendon torn through, but her face remains untouched, her eyebrows only raised in an expression of mild surprise. Harry stands there, expressionless, then kneels down to touch the curve of her cheekbone, the spikes of lavender-colored hair.

"They knew--" he pauses, swallows. "They knew I'd come, if they left her here." A few moments later, he stands up and walks out the door so fast that even Ron has to scramble to keep up with him. Hermione risks a look back, sees through the window that Professor McGonagall is talking to the Dursleys, who are cowering in the corner.

Harry keeps walking, almost running, and Ron and Hermione don't ask any questions. They don't say anything at all, just try to keep up. They're nearly at the end of the street when Harry finally slows, then stops. Hermione's out of breath, but Harry sounds perfectly composed and only a little curious when he says, "I wonder if that's her real hair color, after all." And then with a silent pop, he disapparates.

Hermione catches Ron's eye, and he looks at her gravely before disapparating too. Hermione allows herself to feel a brief blossoming of grief for Tonks, for this chameleon sprite of a woman not too much older than Hermione herself. Then she pulls out her wand and follows.

The next day, Ron and Hermione work out a system for following Harry. At night, Ron only sleeps a breath away from Harry-- literally. They all sleep in the room anyways, but Harry and Ron's beds are pushed together against the wall, and when Harry wakes in the middle of the night and has to go to the loo or get a glass of water or even just stare at the ceiling, it's Ron who wakes up and watches the crack under the bathroom door until the light goes out; it's Ron who somehow always needs a glass of water at the same time Harry does; it's Ron who always wakes when Harry does, no matter how quietly Harry's breathing changes or how silently Harry's eyes open.

Once, when it was Hermione who had to use the loo in the middle of the night, she came back and stood in the doorway, just watching. They were sleeping side by side, Ron turned towards Harry so that every snore ruffled the hair on Harry's head. Hermione imagines Harry waking up, and reaching over to trace the curve of Ron's shoulder, then lower. It's not very difficult to picture, and Hermione knows intuitively that Ron would wake up, and smile only a little hesitantly (just because Ron would be so bloody happy that Harry still wants anything now--), and the morning would find Ron and Harry sharing a warmth even the house can't take away.

The house may belong to Harry now, but that doesn't stop it from being cold—literally—towards its new inhabitants. Without somebody of the Black bloodline (even a renegade like Sirius) to control the domestic magics of the place, the temperature often plunges well below freezing. Dobby, who decided to follow Harry after the three of them left Hogwarts, does what he can, but he doesn't know this house like Kreacher did. Hermione sees her breath form little clouds when she exhales, and imagines ice crystals forming mid-air.

During the day, Hermione's the one who shadows Harry, during all the Order of the Phoenix meetings, during all of his meals and meetings and research. She's the one who discovers that he's become so thin that she can see his shoulder blades through his shirt, sometimes even when he's wearing a Weasley sweater. She's the one who discovers that these days, Harry won't eat properly unless she makes conversation during mealtime so awkward and painful and tactless that he'll eat just so he doesn't have to listen to her anymore. She's the one who discovers that Harry's picked up the habit of drumming his fingers against the nape of his neck when he's thinking, and she wonders where he learned it when Ron points out one day that Harry picked it up from her.

They may be new explorers to this strange territory they call the war, but they are beginning to discover each other too, in ways that Hermione's not sure that even best friends should. She is beginning to realize that after all this is over, even the voices left in her head may not be her own.

Harry finally catches on, and during the day begins spending more and more time in the bathroom with the door locked. One day, Hermione starts to wonder if it's constipation that's going to kill the Boy Who Lived instead of You-Know-Who, so she alohomora's the door only to find that the chicken's flown and Harry's disapparated away. When Hermione goes to tell Ron, he doesn't laugh and tell her to lay off Harry, like he would have done a year ago. He doesn't get heatedly defensive and argue that Harry's got to have privacy like everybody else, like he would have done a few months ago. He doesn't even sigh and promise to help keep a closer eye on Harry during the day, like he would have done a week ago. Instead, he swears very creatively and the two of them start checking around until they find out from McGonagall that he's at Hogwarts, talking to Professor Flitwick about new Warding charms.

They breath a sigh of relief, then make McGonagall promise to personally ensure that Harry comes back to Grimmauld Place when he's done talking to Flitwick. After they're done talking to McGonagall, Ron looks at her thoughtfully (Hermione can count the dark rings around his eyes, and she knows that Ron spends at least as much time watching Harry as sleeping during these long nights), and goes away for a little while. When he comes back, he's holding a dark leather book, dusty and falling apart at the seams. Hermione can barely make out the lettering on the cover: _Bynding Magicks and Enchantements._

"Did you--" Hermione begins.

"Don't worry, I only brought it down because I saw it the other day when Harry and I were making sure all the other rooms were safe. It's safe-- or, it is now, anyways." Ron sets the book down on the table. "But I was flipping through it the other day, and here, look at this." He slides the book over, and Hermione looks to see a picture of two rings threaded together with a ribbon of blood. Hermione begins to read, but after she's finished she has to sit back. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth for a long moment, then looks up.

"Well, now we know what how the House of Black thought men should treat their wives," Hermione tries to smile. Ron's not looking at her, but poring over the pages himself.

"It doesn't look like it was just meant for wives, though. I think it was originally meant to keep track of slaves," Ron says absent-mindedly. Hermione closes her eyes, and knows that even two weeks ago she would have slapped Ron for saying that and hexed the book so whoever opened it would develop a severe case of genital warts. Suddenly she feels a hand on her cheek, and she opens her eyes to see Ron's looking steadily at her.

"I can do it by myself, if you want. It's only meant for two people, anyways," he says softly.

And it nearly kills her, nearly breaks her heart that he would take on this burden from her. But she knows she already has what is necessary to do this; perhaps Ron does too, by now, but she will keep him from finding out for as long as she possibly can. With an effort, she shakes her head.

"No—I'd better do it. By myself, Ron—" She says sharply, when it looks like he'll protest. "It'll minimize the risk if I'm the one summoning the—the succubus, since I'm a girl and all, I won't be suitable prey, whereas she'd be jumping all over you. It'll be Fleur Delacour times a thousand, you know." She smiles weakly. Ron smiles back at her.

"Perhaps, except for the part that Fleur isn't an evil seductress who uses her charms to trap unwary men," He says drily. Hermione snorts.

"You'll remember your family had its doubts, before." She presses her fingers to her mouth, thinking furiously. "All right—I'm sure that there are candles made with deadly nightshade in this house somewhere, but I'm going to have to go to Diagon Alley to get holy water and ground unicorn horn. If I start now—" she does a few quick calculations— "It should be ready by tonight." Ron looks at her.

"All right." He says. Hermione takes a deep breath, and gets ready to disapparate to the apothecary's shop.

"All right."

Dinner that night is meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and kippers laced with draught of living death. Harry's scarcely taken more than one bite before he falls face-first in his mashed potatoes, and Ron wipes it off before the two of them haul Harry up the stairs to the bedroom. It may be Hermione who's raising hell tonight—literally—but it's Ron who takes the silver dagger Hermione offers him silently, who takes off Harry's shirt and oh-so-very gently cuts a thin line on the skin over Harry's heart, who collects a vial of blood, stoppers it, and hands it to Hermione. It's Ron who casts the healing spell, who watches the skin close up and form no more than a thin white line.

"Do you need anything else?" Ron says calmly, but he isn't looking at her. He's looking at Harry—Harry, who's lying on the bed, breathing peacefully. Hermione swallows.

"No." She takes a step towards the bed. "You can leave now. Close the door on your way out." She doesn't watch him leave, but instead rolls up her sleeves, and starts.

Three hours later, Hermione's kneeling in front of the toilet with her head bowed over bowl, fighting the bile rising in her throat. Ron's knocking on the door frantically.

"Hermione! Are you all right? Hermione!" Hermione swallows, pushes the hair away from her face, wonders if it's possible to be all right after a soul-sucking demon's effectively invaded and explored every corner of your soul. The holy water and unicorn horn did its work, but the succubus was impossibly beautiful, and Hermione knew that it wouldn't have been possible not to feel the siren pull of temptation.

And Hermione had known what it would take for her to get the succubus to bend to her will, what it would take to complete the enchantment. But it didn't prepare her for how it would feel to be trapped in the succubus' thrall as it searched out every scrap of her anger, her jealousy, her possessiveness, control—oh, above all, her need for control—and turned it into the four simple rings sitting in her pocket.

She hadn't allowed herself to think about the consequences of failure. That doesn't mean she'd thought about the consequences of success either, about what it would mean if the succubus really did find enough darkness in Hermione's soul to complete the spell, more than enough to hiss approvingly and curl around Hermione's shoulders and whisper in her ear that yes, yes, the boy would now be properly enslaved for eternity.

Hermione throws up.

The door bursts open and Ron's kneeling there besides her, holding her hair back until the heaves turn into dry-retching, and the dry-retching turn into no more than shuddering gasps. He doesn't say anything, just holds her head and her hand, and eventually Hermione's calmed down enough that she can dig around in her pocket and turn to face him.

"Here," she says, dropping a ring into Ron's hand. "There are two sets—two rings linking you and Harry, and two rings linking me and Harry." Ron turns the rings thoughtfully over in his hands.

"So if we wear these, we'll both be able to know where he is at all times?" Hermione nods.

"If you turn it twice to the right, you'll apparate directly to where he is. Twice to the left, and you pull him to you. The enchantment stops anybody else from knowing about the link, since I guess the Blacks liked to keep it a secret that they kept their wives enslaved like a poodles on a leash," Hermione spits out bitterly, "But at least it means that if we fall into enemy hands, we won't—they can't use it to get at Harry." She finishes quietly. Ron stops turning the ring around in his hands, looks at her.

"We're going to have to find some way to get Harry to wear his rings, aren't we?" Hermione nods.

"Getting them on is the tricky part—he has to put them on of his own free will, but once he's wearing them, he can't ever take them off. But he doesn't have to know what they are, and we can—we can transfigure them so they look different." Hermione says, thinking about the stories the succubus told her, how other Blacks have used this enchantment.

One had transfigured the ring into a necklace, to adorn the graceful milky-white neck of his wife. When he'd seen her wife making eyes at another man the necklace had constricted until it had cut off her head. Another had thought his wife's long golden hair had the color and scent of spring, and so had transfigured the ring to a circlet to glitter on her head. When she'd failed to produce an heir, the circlet had contracted so sharply that it scalped her, ripping hair and skin straight off her head. She lay there bleeding to death while her husband picked up her golden mane, and put it on top of the mantle, as a decoration.

Hermione shakes herself from her thoughts, and looks up to see Ron holding out his hand.

"Here. Give them to me, I'll take care of it."

Hermione drops the rings into his hand, and watches Ron as he walks out of the bathroom towards the bedroom. She leans her head back against the wall, and thinks about what she's done this night.

She knows that both she and Ron would give up their lives for Harry in a heartbeat—there was never any doubt about that. But Hermione's realized by now that their lives would be far from the ultimate sacrifice for him, merely the last.

The next morning, she nearly drops her bowl of oatmeal when she sees Harry wearing two silver wristbands, one on his right and the other on his left. He catches her looking at them, and says, "So I suppose Ron's given you yours too?" Her mouth is very dry, but she manages to speak.

"Yes—I—did he tell you how they work?" She asks. He shrugs.

"He said that they were charmed so we could keep tabs on each other if we had to—family heirlooms or something, I think. Are you wearing yours?" Hermione hastily puts out her right hand.

"Yes, I'm wearing mine as a ring. I suppose you've transfigured yours so they're less girly." She attempts a smile.

"Well, Ron's wearing his as a ring too, so I don't know." He smiles at her. "It's almost like we're all married to each other now, isn't it?" Hermione feels sick, waits a moment for the bile to stop climbing up her throat.

"Yes, I suppose it is."

There's more to come, I just have to find some time to write it up. Please review!


	2. Chapter 2

Hey you guys-- sorry about this, but I reread muy original version of chapter 2 and decided that it didn't really fit with Chapter 1, in terms of tone, style, theme, etc. So, I rewrote it-- drastically-- and here's the new version of Chapter 2-- hope it's all right!

They use the rings seven times—(Ron four, Hermione three) before Harry catches on. Before he does, though, Hermione discovers that if she concentrates, she can control how close she pops up next to Harry when she turns the ring right twice; the outer limit seems to be about 10 feet away, though. They don't use it very often, only during the periodic raids that they sometimes go on with the Aurors. Hermione knows that Moody, now the de facto head of the Order of the Phoenix, wants to forbid Harry from coming, and Hermione can certainly sympathize with his reasoning, but the ghost of Sirius Black still haunts them all. What might happen to Harry if he goes on the raids can't compare to what would certainly happen if they tried to lock Harry up at 12 Grimmauld Place, and so every once in a while the three of them accompany with Aurors, go on raids that never turn up anything, get into hot short dogfights at certain hotly contested sites, generally do whatever it takes so Harry doesn't go crazy.

Five out of the seven times they use their rings, Ron and Hermione takes spells that were meant for Harry. Of course spells travel faster than they can react and turn their rings, but most Death Eaters have the bad habit of taking a deep breath and bellowing their spells, which gives Ron and Hermione enough time, usually, to use the rings to get to Harry. They don't use the rings on more than a quarter of the missions they go on; Harry can usually take care of himself.

After the fights, when they've come back to 12 Grimmauld Place, Ron and Hermione heal the wounds they've taken for Harry locked up in the bathroom, eyes squinting in the dim light. Hermione doesn't know what Harry thinks they're doing in there, and frankly, as she checks the stitches on the gash on Ron's back from their most recent fight (the Provakto curse is particularly nasty in that most healing spells won't work on it), she doesn't much care.

But when she's done cleaning and re-bandaging the wound, she sits back on the toilet lid and watches as Ron puts his shirt back on.

"You don't—you don't think Harry's going to run off and do anything crazy, do you?" Hermione asks nervously. She knows that he couldn't without them knowing, her sense of him and his whereabouts thrumming like something living deep in her gut; but she's worried about this for so long that she can't quite let it go, and sometimes she looks up to see a glint in Harry's eye that, quite frankly, scares her to death.

"He couldn't," Ron's voice is momentarily muffled, as the shirt goes over his head. "He belongs to us now, magically speaking." Hermione bites her tongue, reminds herself to hold on to her temper.

"But we belong to him too, you know." She says. It's the only justification she can come up with for what they've done. Even saving Harry's life seven times can't erase the memory of the succubus invading, examining her mind; can't stop her from having nightmares about the other rings the Blacks used the spell the create, and how those rings were used.

"Of course we do," Ron says shortly. "Never needed magic to know that." He unlocks the door and walks out of the bathroom.

It's on the 26th time that they go out with the Aurors that Harry first notices. Hermione is concentrating on fighting off an especially vicious werewolf—a man, but still— when she hears the words "_Avada Kedavra!_" shouted behind her. Her heart jumps her throat and she only spares a moment to kick the werewolf in the balls before whirling around, her heart in her throat.

They're both down, Ron's body crushing Harry's to the ground. The back of Ron's robes are singed through, and Hermione thinks abstractly, Ron's going to be arsed about that (even his best robes are still a little threadbare), it must've been where the curse went through, but at that moment Hermione would burn a thousand robes just to thank fate for damaging only Ron's clothes.

Harry rolls Ron off him with surprising force, and when Hermione sees his face she can tell that he's confused, and that the confusion is slowly turning anger, then the beginnings of fury.

At the moment, though, there's no time for it, no time at all. One narrow escape means nothing if the next attack kills you, so the three of them concentrate on staying alive through the rest of the fight; Hermione doesn't stray further than two feet away from Harry during the rest of the time they're there, and neither does Ron.

When they apparate back to 12 Grimmauld Place, though, Harry shoves Ron up against wall the instant the door closes.

"What—" Harry grabs Ron's right hand. "the fuck—" takes hold of the ring, shoves it up to Ron's face. "is this? Don't," he says, his voice deadly quiet. "tell me that it's a Weasley heirloom, Ron. Just don't."

For a moment, Ron's silent, touches a hand to his shoulder where Harry grabbed him; Hermione knows that he'll wake up with a bruise there tomorrow. Then it's Ron who grabs Harry, propels him into the drawing room and shuts the door.

Hermione sits in the study, tries to do some research despite the shouts that come from the study. She distinctly hears only one phrase, "—does it take to get _away_ from you people?" Then she hears a bang, and realizes that it's the drawing room door being slammed. She sits still for a few moments, then gets up from her seat and looks out the window. Ron and Harry are rolling around in the back yard, trying their best to knock the other one out. Hermione watches a few moments, then goes back to her book.

When they come in, Harry looks a little sullen and Ron's looking forward stoically, but there's not a scratch on either of them. Even Harry's mood seems to have shifted now, and for the better. Hermione's glad to sense that he seems now to only be radiating a rather deep irritation, of the I-can't-believe-the-unbelievable-meddling-I-have-to-put-up-with variety, not the my-two-best-friends-in-the-whole-world-have-betrayed-me-and-I-must-rip-their-organs-out-and-set-myself-up-as-the-next-Dark-Lord-because-of-it kind.

Hermione's had nightmares about Harry figuring out how the rings work and taking that second route. Then again, at this point in the war there hasn't been much that she hasn't had nightmares about.

She examines both of them carefully, both of them studiously avoiding her eyes. Harry sits at the kitchen table, flicking through the latest newspaper, and Ron goes to pour himself a glass of water. Finally, Hermione shakes her head.

"You're going to have to cast better glamours than that, boys. Come on, take them off." They exchange grudging glances, but Ron's the first to take his off, then Harry. They both have fast-developing black eyes, and their clothes are ripped and a little bloodied. Hermione sits them both down and proceeds to heal them from the top down. When she's done she comes back to face them.

"You both feeling better?" They nod. "Good." She says, and socks them both in the stomach—hard—before turning around and walking away.

Later, when Ron and Hermione are alone in the study and Harry's upstairs, Hermione turns to Ron and asks, "How much did you tell him?"

"Enough." Ron says shortly, and Hermione knows that means she'll still have to watch her tongue around Harry.

"Did you tell him that we can use the rings to pull him around?" Ron nods.

"Reckon he's not very happy about it, though."

Not very happy is an understatement when Hermione does use it the first time. The raid goes awry within the first half hour, and even though Shacklebolt manages to investigate the house with Moody covering his back, he yells out that what they were looking for isn't there anyways. Moody orders a retreat, but at that point they're already hemmed in. Hermione stuns her opponent, and, concentrating, manages to apparate outside. Rumsford and Farleigh are already there, and catch her when she stumbles; apparating out of a warded house is possible, but draining. Hermione manages to stand, and turns her ring twice to the left. Harry nearly knocks her over, and then he nearly does it again on purpose when he realizes what she's done.

"Hermione, what did you just do?" His voice is deadly quiet.

"You heard Moody—we had to get out of there anyways, it wasn't worth staying," she argues back hotly. At that moment, Ron appears beside them, and Harry, still glaring at her, disapparates without another word.

Hermione and Harry have a flaming row once they get back to 12 Grimmauld Place, and Hermione knows it's not lost on Harry that Ron is standing right behind her shoulder, for which she is immensely grateful. She's never really thought that Ron would ever side with her against Harry, and she's never really thought that she'd ever get into such a row with Harry—she doesn't like to admit it, but usually when Harry's furious he can get her to back down—but Harry's safety is an issue where she and Ron absolutely will not budge.

Harry stares at both of them, breathing hard, furious and bewildered and also—also the slightest bit frightened. He spins around and goes into the study, slams the door behind him.

Hours later, at dinnertime, he emerges into the kitchen, and Hermione notices the newly-made and newly-healed scratches around his wrists, as if Harry tried to claw the wristbands off. She feels a little sick, but resolutely puts the plate of lamb chops on the table.

"Hungry? We've got a shepherd's pie coming out of the oven too, if you'd like that."

Harry sits down, ignoring Ron who's sitting across the table from him.

"Sometimes," Harry mutters, "I just wish the two of you would disappear."

And four days later, Ron does.

The battle at Lodsmoor Plains is long, vicious, and costly. It's only after they've won and the Aurors are licking their collective wounds that they first realize that Ron's nowhere to be found.

Harry, as predicted, goes mad. He starts yelling at the Aurors, telling them to search every square inch of ground, and nobody, not even Moody, dares to do otherwise. All of them scour the fields until their eyes swim, and finally Hermione sits down and wraps herself in her cloak, draws her knees up and rests her forehead against them, thinking about the promise she and Ron made to each other the day they started following Harry around, thinking whether she can possibly keep it.

"In the case of capture, we, Ronald Bilius Weasley and Hermione Jane Granger, will not go back for each other," Ron says, reading the parchment they've written the promise on.

"Unless said rescue is incidental and in no way hinders the accomplishment of the chief objectives of defeating Voldemort or protecting Harry Potter." Hermione recites.

"Otherwise, no rescue attempt shall be made until the defeat of Voldemort has been achieved." Ron says.

"By the virtue of the magic that runs through our blood," they both say, Ron first nicking himself with a knife so a few droplets of blood pool onto the desk, then Hermione. "we do so swear." Hermione dips the nib of a quill into their mixed blood, and signs the paper, then Ron. The words shimmer for a moment, seem to lift of the page; then after flaring a blinding white for an instant, settle back down.

It is starting to rain, now, on Lodsmoor Plains. Hermione concentrates on breathing in, and thinks about the chains that they will wrap themselves in in the name of victory.

Finally, after dusk has started to fall and the temperature begins to drop below freezing, Moody finally convinces Harry to go home. Harry stares at him, wordless, then disapparates without a sound. Hermione gets up, stretches stiff muscles, and prepares to follow after him, but Moody stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Weasley got hit with an Abducto spell, it's meant for kidnapping people," he tells her. "Pushed Potter out of the way, although Potter was too busy trying not to get sliced up by one of those vampires to notice." He hesitates momentarily. "Weasley could be anywhere by now, but I thought it would be better to let Potter have his way, for a little while." Hermione nods, thinks about the madness glinting in Harry's eyes.

Moody hesitates even further before he ventures, "Have you thought about what you're going to do about Pott—"

"There's a letter," Hermione says sharply, and pulls away before she disapparates back to 12 Grimmauld Place.

As a matter of fact, there are two letters, both of them rolled neatly inside a copy of the Blood Promise Hermione and Ron signed all those weeks ago. The Blood Promise has two lines scrawled above the actual text of the promise— _Harry, it's got to be done_ and _Hermione—don't you dare go back on your word._

Harry reads the text of the Blood Promise, then snatches up the letter addressed to him. He reads the first few lines, then storms out of the bedroom towards the study. Hermione's guessing that Ron's referenced _Bynding Magicks and Enchantements_ in his letter.

She sits down on the bed—Ron's—unrolls her letter, and starts to read.

_Well, Hermione, I suppose it really has come down to this. In any case, you know what needs to be done, better than I ever did—maybe you'll get it done faster, now that I'm not there to bungle up your work and all that. And—and—all I want to say is, take care of Harry, and yourself, as well as you can, as long as you can._

_Yours,_

_Ron_

There's a little space, and then, scrawled untidily at the bottom, as if his hand was shaking so hard that he couldn't write straight.

_That's a lie; there is so much more I wish I could say to you._

Hermione stares at the words until they seem to burn into her eyes, but then a small sound comes from the doorway. She looks up to see Harry standing there, and it seems as if the grief in his eyes will swallow him whole.

She moves over on the bed, pats the spot next to her. He comes over and sits down. The two of them sit there, not moving, not quite touching, for a very, very long time.

Thank you guys for your reviews-- I really appreciate each and every one of them. lee-- there's more coming, but you'll have to wait a little while longer! Inara, thanks for the compliments, and I will try to update asap! Loki, thank you so much for my first review, and I will try to keep up the good work :)) Pants of Happiness, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of this story!

Blue


	3. Chapter 3

All right, you guys, we're nearing the end—one more chapter left! Inara, Lee, thank you so much for reviewing, and I'm glad that both of you are enjoying the story; I hope you both enjoy this chapter as well!

At first, the urge to simply march up to Voldemort's door and scream at them to give Ron back is nearly unbearable; at nights, the burning in her blood is all that keeps Hermione from getting up and apparating to the nearest Death Eater hideout. As it is, she merely grits her teeth, and tries to go to sleep.

After one particularly difficult night, Harry slides into the chair next to her, looks at her, and asks, "Hermione, what happens if you break a Blood Promise?"

"Depends on what you swear by," Hermione says, concentrating fiercely on buttering her toast. "We swore by our magic, so if either of us went back on our word," her hands are shaking, now, "We'd both lose our magic." The silence stretches out, then Hermione gives up and puts the knife down, resists the urge to bury her head in her hands.

"We didn't swear an Unbreakable Vow," She says after a moment, "because you need three people to cast it. And the only person we could think of was you, but you never would have let us swear in the first place." They both sit there, and the emptiness of the third seat at the kitchen table is an almost tangible presence.

"Come on," Harry stands up abruptly, the chair nearly falling as it skids backwards. "We've got work to do."

They both manage to carry on, for a little while. Hermione throws herself into research and Harry learns more war magic than Hermione knew existed. He also learns to throw knives, from Moody, and often Hermione hears the distinctive tinny whistle of steel slicing through air, then the solid thunk as it hits the target. One day, Harry comes in with a box tucked under his arm. He sets it on the table and opens it to reveal four shining knives, although the blades have been coated with some strange substance.

"I've been trying to spell these so that they'll penetrate shield charms, resist transfiguration, that sort of thing." Harry says. "But I'm not sure I've got the enchantment right. Could you check them for me?" Hermione sets down her book.

"Sure."

It's only later, when she's trying to work out how the underlying enchantment is imbalanced that the tiny words engraved on the hilt of each knife catches her eye. She looks more carefully, and sees the first knife engraved with the name Lily Evans. The second—Cedric Diggory. She sets the knife down for a moment, knows before looking what's etched on the third one: Sirius Black. Hermione thinks about marching up to Harry and telling him that if he really wants to have a knife for every person who's died for his sake, he's going to need an armory—Moody refuses to allow Harry to see the casualty list, but Hermione knows the numbers, if not the names or faces of the people who have died for Harry, albeit indirectly.

Hermione thinks about it, then picks up the fourth knife, wonders if she'll see Ron's name there. If she does, she isn't sure that she'll be able to stop herself from hurling the blade straight at Harry's head. But no—the hilt of the fourth knife is blessedly blank.

Hermione sighs, and respells the knives. The next day she gives them back to Harry, and neither of them say anything about it.

And so the days pass, and Harry and Hermione manage to act almost normally, manage to continue doing research and holding meetings and holding weapons and war magic training. Hermione still forces Harry to eat, and Harry still disappears from time to time, although by now both of them know it's merely a matter of form. Just looking at Harry, Hermione thinks as she watches him reading an intelligence report, you'd never guess that he was missing half his heart.

But after the tasks and chores of day are done, night comes, and with it the full force of sorrow. Hermione sometimes dreams of Ron's body, lying cold and mangled somewhere, in a pool of blood. She sees his body torn and wounded and beaten and burned in a thousand different ways, but those aren't even the worst.

The worst are the times when she dreams that he is alive and whole, laughing with his arm wrapped around some woman (the woman's face is never clear), watching a pack of red-headed children play in the yard, and Hermione realizes with a jolt that this is the life Ron could have had someday, if he wasn't dea—

It's at this point that she always wakes up screaming.

After the eighth night in a row, Hermione gives up and simply lies awake, staring at the ceiling. The same question keep turning over and over in her head: _If you had to choose between saving Harry or Ron, who would you choose?_ But she made that choice the moment she signed her name on that promise, and now the question burning in her chest is whether she can live with that answer.

The research on the Horcruxes begins to yield fruit, and even though Harry and Hermione are followed by a host of Aurors wherever they go, after a few weeks they find Helga Hufflepuff's cup, the metal stained and grimy with bloodstains that refuse to disappear. Even after the cup is blasted to dust, Hermione can still feel the texture of dried blood beneath her fingers. Slowly, one by one, each of the Horcruxes appears, and again and again, the Order of the Phoenix sacrifices nearly everything in order to destroy them.

But it's not until the hunt for Rowena Ravenclaw's watch rolls around that all the rage and sorrow and guilt and remorse and fear merges together and attacks Harry and Hermione full force, and it comes at them in the shape of Ginny Weasley.

"You-Know-Who got clever, when he created hiding spots for his later Horcruxes," Moody says, rolling out a map on the table so everyone can see. "He hid Ravenclaw's watch behind a gate he created that only opens at midnight on the night of a blue moon. But he wasn't clever enough, because it just so happens that tomorrow night is a blue moon."

"Where is the gate?" Shacklebolt asks. Moody taps a blue dot on the map.

"Tamar Woods. It's not very far away, should be easy to apparate to."

"Good. Have a squad scout out the place today and gather as much information on it as possible; tomorrow night we'll have a strike team ready at 11:00." Harry gets up out of his seat, clearly ready to leave.

"Hold on, Harry—there's some other intelligence that you should probably know about." Moody nods towards Farleigh, a nervous-looking man with floppy brown hair and a reedy voice. Farleigh coughed, hesitated a moment, and Hermione could already feel her stomach sinking.

"There have been some reports—unconfirmed, as of yet—that Ron Weasley is being held at a werewolf den in Romania. But it's dated information, and the source warned us that he's probably going to be moved, possibly within a day or two."

At that, Ginny bursts out, "Well, then, we have to go after him while we can! If we go right now—"

"No." Harry says curtly. "The Horcrux takes higher priority, and we can't spare the people."

"Well, we don't need a full strike team to go after Ron, I'll go with half a squad, it'll be fine—catch them when they're not expecting us," She argues hotly. The entire Weasley family—with the exception of Percy—was admitted into the full confidence of the Order of the Phoenix after the war started, but sometimes—like now—Hermione finds herself questioning the wisdom of allowing Ginny in, even though she's well aware the hypocrisy.

"Gin—Harry's right. Blue moons don't come every day, we've got to make sure we can get the Horcrux on this one otherwise the war will drag out for another year," Charlie says. The other Weasleys around the table nod in silent agreement, although Mrs. Weasley is so pale that she looks paper-white.

"I'll go alone then—I can—"

"You would walk into a den of werewolves on the night of a full moon?" Harry asks quietly. He doesn't turn to face her.

"Oh, so you're just going to let Ron die? Is that it? How can you call yourself his friend? All you can do all day is throw your useless knives at stupid targets, reading stupid war spells that you're never going to use because you're too cowardly to go after my brother! You actually think you're doing any good hiding inside while the rest of us fight and bleed and die for you? You think you're so high and mighty and special? Well, big surprise, you're really just the Boy Who Sat Around All Day While—"

"Ginny, if you have something to say to Harry, please say it in private." Hermione cuts in sharply. Everybody around the table looks intensely uncomfortable, and desperate for a reason to leave. They don't have to wait long for one.

"Fine!" Ginny doesn't even pause as she drew out her wand. "Fine! Everybody clear out, you hear me? Everybody who's not Harry bloody Potter get the hell out of here otherwise I'll hex you all until you can't sit on your fat arses and let my brother die! So just get out!" Everybody leaves, some scrambling out, others at a more measured pace. Charlie's the last one out, casts one last look at his furious sister, then closes the door behind him.

All the while, Harry just sits there, looking at her neutrally, not saying anything. Ginny's rant is by turns so bitter and malicious that Hermione has never wanted to slap anybody so much in her life, but when Ginny finally winds down, she looks at Harry, trembling.

He hasn't moved a muscle, and looks back at her composedly, his expression even a little bored. Ginny draws herself up, and says coldly, "You know, people always whispered that Ron was only friends with you because you were Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. I wonder what they would say if they knew that Ron's always been a better friend to you than you've ever been to him. One day, when all this is over, I am going to tell the whole world what you did, and you know what they're going to call you then?" Ginny rocks back on her heels, her face utterly calm.

"They're going to call you the Boy Who Let Ron Weasley Die." At that, Ginny turns sharply and leaves. The door swings in beats as sharp as heartbreak behind her, and only after it stills does Hermione dare to look at Harry. For a long moment, his features remain as smooth and composed as ever, and then the calm begins to crack. A small hitching breath, and suddenly the corner of his mouth quirks upwards.

"Did you hear that, Hermione?" The smile begins to spread. "She right, and she thinks I don't know." Harry gets up, walks a few paces, comes back and starts fiddling with the map. "She's right, dead right, O for Outstanding." He starts laughing, insanely, madly, his hands falling away from the table as he starts to shake. "And she thinks I don't know." By now he's laughing so hard that the breath catches in his throat and chokes him, bringing him down to his knees, on the floor. Hermione remains paralyzed in her seat as she watches Harry go slowly insane. And suddenly he's upright, standing at the table, head bowed.

"She thinks," he murmurs quietly, to the table, "that I DON'T KNOW!" On the last words, Harry brings up his hands and slams them back down as fists on the table, and the resulting crash causes more than paper and pens to go flying. Hermione can feel the reverberations resound in the magic in her bones, in all the magic around them. This is what propels her to her feet, towards the person she now fears most and loves second-best in the world, because she can imagine all too easily the entire world's worth of magic collapsing in and then expanding out into a mushroom cloud that will destroy the wizarding world far faster than Voldemort ever could, all because of this grief and guilt and utter fury that will not stay locked up inside this one terribly, pathetically, fucked-up boy.

She grabs him by the nape of the neck, hard, and raises his head so she is staring him straight in the eyes.

"But you do," she says, gently. Then she shakes him not so gently, until his eyes stop looking so glassy. "You know."

Harry blinks a few times. His breath stutters alarmingly for a moment, then evens out, and the muscles beneath her fingers go slack. She lets go, and steps back, watches as he drops his head again. Hermione remains still and silent, watches carefully the motion of his chest beneath his ratty old shirt, the slow rise and slow fall. A few minutes later, Harry raises his head, turns, and walks out of the room. "Tell Moody you're part of the scouting squad, and report back to me any research you come up with on Tamar Woods." He says before the door swings shut. Hermione sighs, and begins picking up paper and pencils off the floor. When Dobby comes and begins fussing, she stands up and leaves the mess behind her.

They get Ravenclaw's watch, no problem. Hermione wonders what Ginny thinks about the fact that once Harry's brought it back out from the gate he drops it like a hot potato into Moody's hand and immediately apparates to the den in Romania.

When Hermione and the rest of the Order catch up to him, they find Harry in the middle of an ambush, Death Eaters casting spells from behind rocks, behind trees, anywhere and everywhere. After a bout of sharp, heavy fighting, the Order eventually forces them to retreat.

While the rest of them tend to the wounded and keep watch for any further attacks, Bill ventures into the now empty cave and casts a Searching Spell. He comes back, his face drawn and weary. "There's no trace of Ron, they never took him here." Harry's silent for a moment.

"All right, then." He says briskly. "Come on, we need to find out how to destroy that watch." In a blink, he's disapparated back to England.

And that's that.

A few months and a grand total of six destroyed Horcruxes later, which is still much later than Hermione had hoped and far earlier than she could have expected, she finds herself in a hive of activity, as the Order of the Phoenix and all its assorted allies gather at Hogwarts, to prepare for the final battle. And if all goes well, it really will be the final battle, as hard as it is to believe, for Voldemort is truly mortal now, although he doesn't know it yet.

"Hermione, are you all right?" Neville touches her arm, briefly, and Hermione shakes her head to clear it.

"Yes, I'm fine." She attempts a smile. "Don't worry about me. Are the new warding charms on the walls already put up?" She risks a quick glance towards Harry, alone in the midst of all the bustle of preparation; nobody dares to go near him, but she knows he is not thinking about the battle to come. He is thinking about the battles fought long ago, the battles they have lost.

The final battle is blood and dust and grime and heat and screaming and a thousand Unforgivables flying in the air at once. Even though she tries to keep an eye on Harry, Hermione finds herself just struggling to stay alive, casting spells at anything not wearing the red and gold robes of the Order.

Then, suddenly, all over the battlefield, the Death Eaters begin to collapse to their knees, one by one. It takes a moment to understand what this means, but then Hermione shoves her ring two turns to the right, just in time to come up a few steps behind Harry as he sends another knife whistling through the air into Voldemort's chest. Voldemort drops his wand, staggers back a few paces.

"No…" He hisses, blood starting to trickle from his mouth. "This can't be happening…" Harry starts to advance, throwing more and more knives into this suddenly very weak and vulnerable body.

"Yes, it can." Harry says, coming to a stop right in front of Voldemort. He's holding another knife in his hand, and almost casually, Harry brings it up, forward, and slashes sideways, and now Voldemort is on the ground, his throat cut, the last dregs of his bitter life oozing slowly out. He is nothing more than a dying animal now—even less. For a dying animal, there would be pity.

Harry stands there and watches for a few moments, then turns and walks away. The entire battlefield is still, for these moments, but Hermione sees the quaking in his shoulders, the shivering of his body, and she darts forward and catches him as he collapses.

Suddenly, the battle starts to rage again, except this time the Death Eaters and Dark Creatures are fighting desperately to escape. Hermione takes the time to cast a quick shield charm around them before she gently lowers herself to the ground, Harry dead weight in her arms. His skin is cold and clammy, and she realizes distantly he's going into shock. She blinks a moment, processing, then rips open his robes. The blood which was disguised against the scarlet of the robes now shows a startling crimson against his shirt.

"Hermione—I can't—I—Ron—Ron—" Harry mutters incoherently, trying to get up.

"Hush, just hush," Hermione says, frantically trying to remember a healing spell, any healing spell. "It'll be all right, Harry, everything will be all right."

But at this moment, she's not sure that anything ever will be, because somehow this victory tastes like ashes in her mouth.

Only one chapter left to go—anyways, please review! Any and all feedback welcomed.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Hey you guys! 9AlsoKnowAs9, thank you for reviewing—I'm glad you like my style. Anyways, this is the last chapter, everything gets wrapped up; I hope that you guys enjoy it, and thank you so much for reading! As always, please take the time to review!

It will take Harry two weeks to heal completely. At least that's what Ginny tells Hermione, the one time she comes by 12 Grimmauld Place. Hermione nods, and keeps on packing. Ginny stares at her, watches as Hermione throws a few pull-overs into her bag.

"Aren't you even going to visit him?"

"I doubt that I could, even if I tried." Hermione says shortly. On the battlefield, she'd given up on staunching the wound—even the spells she had learned weren't enough for such a serious injury— and simply apparated straight to St. Mungo's. Staggering under his weight, she'd carried him in until a veritable flock of medi-wizards and medi-witches came and whisked him away from her. She'd only gone in to see him once, and he'd been unconscious at the time, so he hadn't seen her lightly tap the silver wristband on his left arm. The wristband had dropped off easily, but at that moment the mediwitches had pushed her out of the way, scolding her, and that, for the moment, had been that.

Once she'd been out of the hospital, Hermione had taken the wristband out of her pocket. It had reverted back to a ring, and she pulled its match off her own finger. She stared at them for a few moments, then tossed them both in the air, hit them with a Blasting Curse. Before she apparated back to 12 Grimmauld Place, she saw dust from the explosion glittering in the pale winter light.

Hermione hasn't gone back to St. Mungo's since, but she knows from the Daily Prophet that everybody in the wizarding world who isn't dead or dying has gone to St. Mungo's to pay homage to Harry, whom they're evidently determined to re-anoint as their savior. Ginny snorts.

"Of course you could get in to see him—Harry made them let me in, I've been with him the entire time—" She stops short, blushes.

"Made up, have you?" Hermione pulls two raincoats out of the wardrobe, folds them before stuffing them in. Ginny looks at her for a moment, then says, "I don't understand either of you at all." Hermione almost smiles at that, but she doesn't turn around when Ginny disapparates without a word.

Harry shows up on the morning of the fifth day after the war, nine days early. There's a noise at the door, and Hermione looks up to see him standing there.

"You ready to go?" She asks him, zipping her bag shut. She'd packed his bag before hers, and she's just finished shoving a map of Europe in her own pack.

"Yeah." He catches the bag Hermione tosses him, slings it over his shoulder. "Where are we going first?"

They start in Romania, but after that yields nothing, they start looking everywhere. Cities, werewolf dens, vampire lairs, ruined castles, manors, cottages, marshes, forests, lakes, towns, villages. They chase down every rumor, every whisper of captives or prisoners, anything, anything at all. They see more than they ever wanted to, and yet after four months Hermione wakes up one morning and considers the distinct possibility that she may never see Ron Weasley again.

She pushes the thought away, but the next night in Norway, Hermione's in her sleeping bag staring up at the ceiling of their tent while Harry lies motionless a few feet away, fast asleep. Hermione tosses and turns until she can't stand it. She wriggles out of her sleeping bag, charms her robes so she won't freeze the moment she steps outside, and then quickly gets out of the tent so she won't let all the cold air in. She looks up at the sky and her breath catches; above her is a glorious display of the Northern Lights, curtains of rainbow ripples of light dancing right out of her reach, and suddenly she's reminded of a particular day that seems so very, very long ago, before the three of them left Hogwarts. She and Ron had been sitting in the common room, Hermione looking through a book, Ron sitting by the window and looking out pensively.

"You know, Harry might decide not to come back to Hogwarts next year. With the war coming, and all." Hermione put down her book, less shocked that she might have been.

"Well, if he does—I suppose we'll just have to follow him, won't we?" She says calmly, and it's almost worth it just to see Ron's jaw drop slightly as he turns to look at her.

"Well, that was easier than I thought." He mutters before getting up from his seat and sitting in the armchair across from her. "But you know what it might take to protect him, don't you Hermione?"

Hermione's about to retort back that of course she does, that of course she knows that it might take her life—when she realizes that yes, it really and truly might mean her death in order to keep Harry safe. And she's always known this somewhere in the back of her mind—known it ever since the Sorcerer's Stone from first year—but the thought of death suddenly seems terrifying. Dead. Gone. No return. Buried at the age of 18, and no amount of mourning on Harry or Ron or her parents' part would bring her back.

She's jolted out of her thoughts when Ron puts his hand over hers, looking at her intently.

"You—you don't have to, you know." He says, a little awkwardly. Hermione looks at him, uncomprehending for a moment, but when she realizes what he's saying she jerks back.

"Of course I do." And the words bring her back to reality, remind her that this is the cost of devotion. "Of course I do, there's the entire stopping Voldemort from winning bit, he'd make everybody get those horrible snake tattoos, the thought doesn't bear contemplating—" that manages to startle a surprised laugh out of Ron, at least. "And, and Harry's my best friend and I love him. That—that's enough for me." She looks up at Ron a little defiantly, but when she sees the expression in his eyes she knows that that's always been more than enough for Ron too. Ron smiles, a little sadly, doesn't remove his hand from hers.

"Well," he says lightly. "You know I love you too, Hermione." She almost chokes at this, at the words themselves and the promise behind them, but she manages to catch her breath long enough to look Ron in the eye.

"And I love you." She says with difficulty, and if somebody had told her that one day Ronald Weasley would make an emotional declaration with more ease that her, she would have laughed herself sick. After that, Ron had smiled and gone back up to his room, and Hermione had stared blankly at the same page of her book for a very, very long time after that. Their devotion to each other may be the death of them all in the end, but there's a strange sort of comfort in the knowledge that it's circular.

The cold is beginning to cut through even her newly charmed robes, and with one last glance at the sky, Hermione goes back into the tent. And all right, she's been reliving every moment she's ever spent with Ron ever since he disappeared, but still, Hermione thinks to herself, there was no reason for that particular memory to pop up just now. No reason at all.

On the seventeenth day of the fifth month, Moody catches up to them.

"Come back," he says. "The Ministry of Magic's in a right bind, nobody gives a damn what the Ministry says anymore, they just all want to know what the hell happened to the two of you—yes, you too, Missy—" He says when Hermione raises an eyebrow. "The tripe the Daily Prophet's printing, s'all about the two of you, like to start a riot one of these days." Moody hesitates, then plunges ahead. "They think you've deserted them." Harry snorts, turns away.

"And I know the two of you need to do this, but they need you too—" Moody says. "And the Ministry's got information that the two of you could use—the trail's running cold by now, isn't it?" When there's no response from either of them, he sighs. "Come home, Potter, Granger. You can search for Weasley just as easily from home, the missions the Ministry wants to send you on are the sorts of places that you'd be going anyways, they want you to clean up mess that's been left after the war. The kind of mess—" Moody pins them with a sharp eye. "The kind of mess that Weasley's probably lost in right now."

Harry doesn't turn back to look at Moody, but Hermione can tell he's thinking about it.

"One condition," Harry says finally. Moody dips his head, listening. "Hermione works with me. Not negotiable." Moody nearly cracks a smile.

"Not a problem—the Ministry was counting on her stopping you from going mad," he says, and Harry and Hermione look at each other, and the two of them start laughing at the same time. It perhaps has to do with the fact, Hermione reflects, that both of them passed madness long, long ago, and the only one who could take them back is nowhere to be found.

So they start working for the Ministry, and Harry is a little non-plussed and just the slightest bit disconcerted when they shove him in an office—very spacious, Hermione notes, beautiful view of the city—slap a badge on his chest, and unleash a team of enthusiastic—a little overenthusiastic—young Aurors on him, never mind that most of the Aurors are at least five years older than he is. None of the Aurors managed to come through the War without having been in the line of fire, but none of them approach Harry or even Hermione's experience, which accounts for the inverted power dynamic. Hermione laughs a little, privately, but when Harry, smirking, tells her it's her turn to hold the 'ducklings' in line, she suddenly finds it not quite as amusing.

But the Ministry doesn't try to attach too many strings to their work, and it is true that they get intelligence that Hermione and Harry had no access to on the road. They see more cities, more werewolf dens, more vampire lairs, more ruined castles, more manors, more cottages, more marshes, more forests, more of everything. Everything except Ron.

One day in early February, Harry and Hermione take the team and storm a once elegant but now decrepit mansion in Bulgaria. Most of the hostiles go down without much of a fight, and the ducklings work on clearing the first floor while Harry and Hermione search the rest of the house. Hermione's the one who flings open the second door on the third floor, but it's Harry who emits a hoarse, strangled cry and rushes toward the corner of the room. Hermione whirls around, wand drawn, but her heart almost stops when she sees Harry hoisting Ron in his arms. Ron's eyes are closed, and the pallor of his skin only underscores the rust-colored wounds that show through his shredded cotton shirt. When he disappeared, Ron was at least half a foot taller than Harry, but now it seems like he's not much more than skin and bones, cradled within Harry's arms.

"Hermione—help me—" Harry says, his voice cracking in desperation, and Hermione runs forward—and oh Merlin, sweet Merlin he's real and he's alive _he's alive_— and together the three of them disapparate back to England.

And it's a little like carrying Harry back to St. Mungo's all over again, except it's entirely different, because Hermione managed to force the last dose of the highly illegal, moderately dangerous, but extraordinarily powerful Panacea potion down Harry's throat before they came and whisked him away, and Hermione could afford to go back and pack and wait for Harry because she knew of course he was going to be fine anyways, and Hermione's trying tell herself the same thing about Ron, but here's the thing, here's the kicker—she doesn't know, she doesn't know, and if she thought she'd gone mad before she's sorely mistaken, because this waiting, this not knowing is what real madness is.

Harry looks about ready to climb out of his own skin. He's not just pacing up and down the hallways, he's fidgeting and absent-mindedly kicking the walls and biting his lip and trembling and breathing too fast, and even when Ginny puts out a restraining hand (the entire Weasley clan's waiting out in the hall with them) it only stops Harry for a few seconds before it starts up again.

It's six hours later when the medi-witch emerges and says, "All right, you can go in, but his eyes—" before she's nearly bowled over as they all rush in to the room at the same moment.

But then they all stop behind some invisible line, because Harry's there first, and Hermione would hate Harry for the first time ever for the way everybody always defers to him, except that Harry's got his forehead pressed against Ron's, (but—but—Ron's wearing a blindfold?) his hands gripping Ron's, the two of them talking in low fast voices. And Hermione's never seen anybody light up from the inside the way Harry does, now, the way Harry's expression is such a strange mixture of love and fear and sorrow and guilt and utter happiness, and Hermione knows that he feels like he's seeing the most beautiful thing in the world but if he blinks too hard Ron will disappear right in front of their eyes. She knows that's how he feels, because it's how she feels too.

Harry's shuddering so hard now that it seems like he's going to fly apart at any moment, but slowly, gently, Ron pulls Harry into a hug, and the shudders gradually slow, then disappear. After a few long moments, Harry pulls back, and he smiles—the smile's fucking incandescent, it's that bright—and slides off the bed. Hermione takes a step forward, but suddenly Ron's buried beneath a pile of crying, laughing, sobbing Weasleys, and they're so thick around them that Hermione can't even see him.

Hermione closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and turns around and leaves. The Weasleys have done so much for her and Harry that she can manage to give them this time, at least, but she's coming back later and the hospital regulations regarding visiting hours can go to hell for all she cares.

It's past midnight when she manages to sneak back into his room. A muttered lumos lights up the place, but she frowns when Ron doesn't react at all; he's still wearing his blindfold. It's not until Hermione takes a few tentative steps forward that his head comes up, turns towards her.

"Hermione." And she takes the last few steps at a dead run, stops short at his bedside, afraid that if she touches him he'll shatter into a million pieces.

"Ron—" She says, and even she's surprised at how violently her voice is shaking. "Ron—" He smiles, he reaches a hand towards her.

"C'mere, Hermione." She puts a hand in his, marvels at the feeling of his skin beneath hers, but up close notices the suspicious emptiness beneath the cloth covering his eyes, gasps.

"Ron—your eyes—what—" and Ron sighs, shakes his head.

"It would be—it'd be easier if you'd just take the blindfold off. " Hermione hesitates, and Ron's mouth twists wryly. "It's all right, Hermione—really, it—" And because she can't bear to hear his voice like that, she reaches up and gently undoes the cloth tied around her head—

And the blindfold nearly drops from her nerveless hands when she sees that his eye sockets are empty, covered only with scar tissue, and she suddenly feels sick, as if she's been punched in the stomach.

"Ron—" she croaks.

His breath catches at her voice, and he says, a little unsteadily, "I'm sorry, Hermione, I wasn't thinking, I know I—it can't be very pleasant to look at—"

"No—_no_, Ron, never." Hermione can feel her heart twist at the sound of Ron apologizing—apologizing—to her. She wants to tell him that he's the most beautiful sight she's ever seen, she wants to tell him that she could just sit here and look at him forever, she wants to tell him she wants to Crucio whoever did this to him, she wants to tell him she's so, so, sorry, she wants to tell him that if she could, she'd turn back time and she'd be the one pushing Harry out of the way that day—but her breath catches in her throat, and all she can do is take his right hand again, and look at their entwined fingers.

Ron's silent a little while before he speaks again.

"They took my right eye when they realized I wasn't going to talk." He says, finally. "Then they took my left after I tried to escape. The—there's not really very much they can do for me here, Hermione, I think you should know that. Simple truth is that even magic can't grow eyes back, even if mum and dad don't want to believe that right now."

"It doesn't matter," Hermione says fiercely, "Nothing matters now that you're back with us. That's all that matters, Ron, that's all that ever mattered." Ron smiles, a strange and sad smile.

"Well. In any case, thank you for taking care of Harry for me. I—we never talked about it before, but I know what making those rings must have cost you, Hermione." Hermione looks down, shakes her head before realizing he can't see her.

"We did what we had to do, Ron." She tilts her head. "You don't have your ring on—I suppose that means you've spelled off Harry's wristband now?" He utters a small laugh.

"Yes, Harry's finally free." They're silent, and Hermione can almost feel Ron withdraw into himself, for some inexplicable reason. She tightens her hold on his hand—she's not going to lose him, not after all this, and casts her mind around for something to say.

"Ron—" Hermione swallows. "You need to know—I— do you remember that day in the common room?" and she knows how incoherent she sounds, but there's no help for it. " The day when we were talking about protecting Harry, and I said I loved you?" Ron nods silently. "Well," she says, and she has to swallow to talk around the lump in her throat. "No matter what you look like, no matter what happens to either of us, I love you. I love you as—as much as you'll let me, Ron. As much as you'll accept," She ends in a near whisper, and she can hear Ron's breath grow decidedly more uneven.

"Hermione—" Ron takes a deep breath, utters a strange little laugh, and Hermione can feel her heart starting to try and climb out of her throat; did he not understand what she just meant? Or—or worst, does he just not care? "It's interesting that you say that, Hermione—and you'd better not go back on those words, because at the beginning of the war I asked Harry to guard a little something for me." Ron gropes around with his free hand in the drawer of the nightstand, lightly swats Hermione's hand away when she tries to help.

"I wanted to ask before, but I didn't think it was fair to you with the war going on and then—and then I suppose Harry didn't want to say anything after I disappeared—" Ron's voice breaks briefly. "But today Harry finally gave it back to me—probably half the reason he was looking for me, so he could get rid of it—" He smiles shakily, but he opens his hand and lying in the palm of his hand is a pearl ring. Hermione gapes at it, utterly uncomprehending for a moment.

"Now," Ron says hoarsely, "I know I'm not much to look at anymore—never really was anyways," and he takes the ring finger of her left hand, just runs his thumb over her knuckles for a moment. "But Hermione, would you—" his voice breaks, briefly, as he slowly, gently, fits the ring just over the tip of her left ring finger. He is, she realizes, giving her time to pull away. "Would you mind terribly if I belonged to you now?"

And the last words are scarcely out of his mouth before Hermione's pushes her finger all the way through the ring and launches herself on him, her face against the milky-white curve of his shoulder. "You always have," she whispers into his beautiful, scarred skin. "And when I lost you, I knew then that I belonged to you too," She brings his hand up to her mouth and begins to kiss each knuckle, index to pinky, top to bottom. "Because I found that I was lost myself."

Ron pulls his hand away from her and suddenly she finds herself wrapped in his arms, choking quietly in St. Mungo's in the arms of a man who should have died a thousand times a thousand lifetimes ago, a man who has his face pressed tenderly against her hair, breathing deeply and silently, as if she smells of spring.

Now is the time she starts to cry.

She is crying for them both.


End file.
